ir77 Launch Party

September 01, 2006

Nearly two years in the making, Lukas Huffman’s book, ir77 is an in-depth look at snowboarding through the focus of five themes: Anticipation, Pain, Dedication, Stories, and Exhilaration. In late summer of 2004, Lukas put out the call to snowboard photographers, riders, artists, and writers for content that related to these five themes. At first, the contributions trickled in, then over the winter of 2004-2005, the mail in Luke’s mailbox became a full-on deluge of snowboard documentary material. Summer ’05 found Lukas, Andrea Pastenbaugh, Eric Lovejoy, and a slew of helpers sorting through the pictures, art, and writings, laying out what would become the ir77 book.

Somewhere in the midst of that long summer of sorting, scanning, and designing, Luke came up with the idea for the movie. As it says right on the book, “When the book could go no further, we made a movie. With the help of ex-Robot Food brains Jess Gibson and Jake Price, Winter 2005-2006 was spent filming. Then, of course, summer ’06 was spent editing. And when that was all over, what was there left to do but throw a party?

The movie premiere went down Friday the 25th of August and, for all intents and purposes, was a slam-dunk. Luke rented a sick warehouse space in North Portland, complete with a NYC-style bare-wood entrance hallway, thirty-foot ceilings, crazy leftover industrial ceiling fixtures, and a crazier Czech bartender who poured every drink a triple. Unfortunately for the dude who rented Luke the space, this resulted in the attendees being even more inebriated than your average shred to-do. Despite the stress of the dude who rented Lukas the party space, we somehow managed to premiere the movie, entertain some 200 people, and celebrate three birthdays and several departures from the West Coast.

The highlights were shred heads from all up and down the west coast—Shin and Shandy Campos from Canada, Dave Short, John Cartwright, and numerous Whistler homeys. Peeps came up from California, Dave Seaone made the scene, and Mikey Leblanc said “Good job. Look— the people are even watching the movie! With only Shandy’s closing part left, someone passed out and knocked over the AV cable, causing more stress for the party-space guy, and giving Shandy something more to bitch about. Fire trucks and an ambulance rolled up to deal with the fainting human, the DJ kicked in, Luke said “screw it about playing the rest of the movie, and we all got on with the festivus. And then, of course, there was a raging dance party.

Making a book and a movie ain’t easy, and neither is throwing a party. But like all things that take that much effort, in the end it’s worth it. In fact, it should say on the book “When the movie could go no farther, we had a party.